Theres something rotten in Rio - and the smell is coming from the huge stacks of rubbish piled up on sidewalks all over the city. Rios street sweepers chose the carnival holiday to demand better salaries. Their wages start at roughly $400 a month.

Millions of tourists are drawn each year to the Grand Canyon to see its impressive rocks, which record nearly two billion years of Earth history. Running for almost 450km and to a depth of 1,800m, it is almost too vast to take in.

The Federal Reserve has been pumping money into the US economy by buying $85bn of bonds each month. From January, it will cut the figure to $75bn. And it has signalled that it will further reduce the scale of its bond buying if the economy continues to improve.